Kids Company founder: cuts contributed to riots


by Don Paskini    
11:00 am - August 11th 2011

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Camilla Batmanghelidjh is the founder of the children’s charity Kids’ Company, which helps tens of thousands of exceptionally vulnerable children. Her work has been praised by David Cameron, she contributed to their Social Justice policy group, her charity was one of the inspirations for the government’s “Big Society” (she was one of the main guests at one of the many launches of the Big Society), and she is an adviser to the Centre for Social Justice, which was set up by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Civil Society interviewed her yesterday, and here’s what she had to say about the relationship between spending cuts and the riots:

“Youth services were “at breaking point” even before cuts to their funding and were unable to provide the support needed to prevent this week’s riots, according to Camila Batmanghelidjh.

Speaking to civilsociety.co.uk, the founder of youth charities the Place2Be and Kids Company (pictured) said young people need to feel as if they “belong somewhere” where positive behaviour matters.

“If organisations that kids can belong to have been diminished through the cuts and there’s no secure base or a healthy group for kids to belong to then they’ve got nothing to lose.

“The services were at breaking point anyhow, and to be honest with you, most of them didn’t have sufficient resources to deal with these types of kids in the first place.

“Lots of the youth provisions had become very dangerous because they were too understaffed and the kids’ destructive and savage behaviour set the agenda.

“The counter-action coming from these agencies couldn’t be strong enough because it was too under-resourced.”

She added that the government should lay down a vision for disenfranchised young people which should be wide-ranging but should include additional resources for charities.”

*

Conservative Home argues that Right wing politicians will only gain a political advantage from these riots if they “win the battle” and defeat “the idea that cuts are to blame for our social crisis”. The New Statesman thinks that “it is too simplistic to blame the coalition’s cuts for the riots”.

But there’s nothing “simplistic” about the analysis of people like Batmangheldjh, which comes from years of experience of working directly with vulnerable young people. And rather than thinking about how his party could exploit the riots to win support, Tim Montgomerie and other Tory politicians should listen to what she is saying.

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About the author
Don Paskini is deputy-editor of LC. He also blogs at donpaskini. He is on twitter as @donpaskini
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Reader comments


1. oldandrew

I love the idea that the views of a patronising middle class activist who works with the poor comes from “years of experience”.

How about asking people who are poor themselves what they think of the rioters, or is that not the right sort of experience?

You can be certain none of them sound like this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/jun/05/child-criminal-camila-batmanghelidjh

2. Anthony

Quite a lot of the people tried and convicted so far were not kids in need of these projects.

I think we must take what she says with some scepticism. After all, her organisation, Kids Company, received millions of pounds from the government through the Youth Sector Development Fund (see http://www.kidsco.org.uk/about-us/government-funding) and that Fund was cut by the coalition.

3. Robert

She’s excusing wanton criminality with lame excuses! It’s bleeding heart lefties like her that have got us into this situation!

It’s Ok Right-wing trolls, I’ve taken care of it for you.

4. Charlieman

@1. oldandrew: “I love the idea that the views of a patronising middle class activist who works with the poor comes from “years of experience”.”

You obviously do not know much about Camila Batmanghelidjh if you describe her in such terms.

The Guardian video to which you link is a mess. At one point she discusses brain development in young people, saying that the area of the brain responsible for understanding responsibility and mutuality develops at age 25 (F) or 27 (M). If we were to pursue logic, society would treat young people as children until they were, say, 26.

However do not treat the practical results that she has achieved in the same way as her theories. Kids Company is acknowledged as a success by people of all political persuasions.

—
On an analytical note, in order to associate funding cuts with rioting, we have to show that rioters had been potential beneficiaries of youth services and that cuts had reduced/denied the service that they received. Many rioters clearly were ineligible owing to age or social circumstances, and those arrested so far are unlikely to be typical. It is more than likely that the genuinely disaffected had more street wit to avoid detection. But nothing has been proven so far.

5. oldandrew

4

All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t need somebody from a privately educated background to tell us about the inner-cities, no matter how worthy they personally are and how many millions of pounds of our money they’ve had the privilege to spend. Can’t we try and listen to the people who actually live in poverty, rather than a tourist with an ideological agenda to push?

6. Brendan

Well said oldandrew. I’m sick of hearing from the bleeding-heart middle classes, who live miles from these idiotic thugs.

7. damon

Camilla Batmanghelidjh is certainly someone to be listened too I think.
But she’s like the A&E department at a hospital. She’s trying to nuture severly damaged children who are being continiously produced. You have to ask why is that.
So many of the young kids who are involved in the post code gangs are of African origin.
Like AJ Nakasila who did some short films on Channel 4.

AJ was born in Congo and came to England when he was two years old. He got caught up in gang culture but now he has turned his back on his old lifestyle and is determined to make a better future for himself.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/i4i+aj+nakasila+biography/1394447.html

Who’s fault is that? We took him and his mother in as asylum seekers from the war in Congo, and they join the underclass almost instantly.
In 2007, 9 of the 27 teenagers killed by knife and gun crime in London were of Congolese origin. Tottenham has a big African population now. Was it fair on Tottenham, which already had problems, to ”dump” them there? Why couldn’t they have been housed in David Cameron’s Whitney constituency?

In Croydon where I come from, things are much more violent than they were in the 70s, and local gangs like the ”DSN” are responsible for loads of crime.
http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/8220912.DSN_gang__general__on_hunger_strike_awaiting_deportation/

So it’s all well going on about cuts, but some things are really hard to change.
Like in the slums of Rio, once guns and drugs were introduced, that was it. Violence became endemic.

8. john reid

I’ve alot of time for Cammila ,but she just didn’t put her point across well on Question time, Infact david Davis of all people wlaked over her.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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